Tornado rips the roof off a stable as wet weather turns Bonfire Night into a damp squib
- Fierce winds leave trail of destruction in rural Worcestershire
It looks like the aftermath of a tropical storm, but this scene of destruction took place on a farm in Worcestershire yesterday.
A tornado uprooted trees and tore the roof of a stable as it swept past the village of Inkberrow in the mid-afternoon.
Amazingly, the fierce winds threw the stable roof 20metres through the air before it came to rest stuck in the branches of a nearby tree.
Other trees were left broken in half at the Knowle Fields Barn Farm complex.
Twister: A tornado ripped the roof off a building and pulled up trees in Worcestershire yesterday
Waterlogged: Many roads in Essex became flooded on Friday, like this one in Ingatestone, after heavy rain
Incredibly, the storm passed over workers in a nearby office building, who didn't realise the extent of the damage until they stepped outside after it had finished.
Dawn Wheatcroft, office manager at partitioning company Waterson's Projects, which is based on the site, said that the storm seemed to 'last forever'.
She said: 'It seemed like forever whilst it was happening, although it probably lasted less than a minute.
'It was a bit of a grey day but you never expect something like that to happen, it was one of the worst storms I've ever seen.'
Flooding: Heavy rain in the south caused road closures in Southampton yesterday
Weather experts believe the tornado may have been a funnel cloud, which can still cause destruction if it touches the ground.
Tornado sightings were also reported in nearby Redditch at the same time.
If not a washout, Bonfire Night looks set to be something of a damp squid as floods and torrential rain from last night give way to light rain mainly confined to Lincolnshire, East Anglia and South-East England.
Across remaining parts of the UK it will be a dry night with mostly clear skies.
Cold across Scotland and Northern Ireland with a widespread ground frost and an air frost in places. Mist and fog patches will develop too across parts of the north where winds are light.
